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May 15 2022
Austrian Economics
By:
David Henderson
I've held off writing an obituary for George Smith because I wasn't sure that the obituary friends pointed to was truly of him. But David Boaz has convinced me that it was. I had lost touch with George and so I didn't know that he had moved to Bloomington, Illinois. David Boaz's obituary of George is an excellent su...
May 14 2022
Economics of Health Care
By:
David Henderson
I find it refreshing when a government agency says no to spending more money. Last month, in an editorial titled "Sandbagging a Alzheimer's Treatment," the Wall Street Journal editors criticized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for refusing to pay for Biogen's new Alzheimer's drug, Aduhelm. In their...
May 14 2022
Fiscal Policy
By:
Scott Sumner
Most fiscal policy consists of adjustments in taxes and transfers. However, the effects of this type of fiscal policy are largely offset by changes in monetary policy, at least when the Fed is doing its job. Defenders of fiscal policy respond that changes in real government spending can directly boost output even w...
May 14 2022
Free Markets
By:
John Phelan
Baseball is back, but it was in doubt for a while. It was only on March 13 that the second longest work stoppage in baseball history – 99 days – came to an end when the MLB and the MLB Players' Association – the baseball players’ union – struck a deal. The Players Association was pushing for a number of th...
May 13 2022
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
By:
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
Woody Holton, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, has written a nearly 800-page tome entitled Liberty is Sweet and sub-titled The Hidden History of the American Revolution. His previous books include a definitive biography of Abigail Adams and Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, ...
May 12 2022
Liberty
By:
Pierre Lemieux
Speaking of prime minister Boris Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak (among other British politicians), the Financial Times notes ("Police Issue 50 More Fines over Westminster ‘Partygate’ Breaches," May 12): Johnson, his wife Carrie and Sunak were last month fined £50 each for attending an illegal birthday party...
May 12 2022
Macroeconomics
By:
Scott Sumner
The government recently announced that the 12-month rise in the CPI slowed from 8.5% in March to 8.3% in April. But this is not good news, as inflation is actually getting worse. People have become used to thinking of inflation in a "let bygones be bygones" fashion. Don't cry over spilled milk; let's focus on th...
Read this Pierre Lemieux Classic:
Oct 6 2014
Featured Article
By Pierre Lemieux
"A 'social welfare function' representing a set of 'social indifference curves' belongs not to 'we' but to whoever writes down, or imagines, the preferences of 'society.'" One can barely read a newspaper or listen to a politician's speech without hearing the standard "we as a society" or its derivatives. "You kn...
May 11 2022
Media Watch
By:
Pierre Lemieux
The benefit of every government report on inflation is to remind us how even intelligent people are often confused---even if they may have once been acquainted with the economic way of thinking. I read in today's Wall Street Journal ("Inflation Slipped in April, but Upward Pressures Remain," May 11, 2022): Those dynam...
May 11 2022
Money and Inflation
By:
David Henderson
Alan Reynolds beat me to it, with an excellent analysis of the latest inflation numbers. Alan notes that "CNBC, like others, reported that 'The consumer price index accelerated 8.3% in April.'" No it didn't. It rose by 8.3 percent from the same time last year. But the CPI rose by 0.33 percent in April. Compare that ...
May 11 2022
Media Watch
By:
Pierre Lemieux
Different individuals not only have different preferences or values but also, whatever the degree of equality in their society, face different circumstances. Not surprisingly, these two sets of conditions will typically imply different evaluations of specific social (including economic and political) phenomena. A ba...
May 11 2022
Moral Reasoning
By:
Scott Sumner
I frequently meet conservatives who defend nationalist regimes as being good for business. Next time I meet one, I'll be sure to ask how business in Russia is doing these days.Bloomberg has a good article on how Hindu nationalists are turning on India's highly successful tech companies: For a growing number of Hindu...
May 10 2022
International Trade
By:
David Henderson
A $100 bill, if you can keep it. In the May 9, 2022 Wall Street Journal, Markos Kounolakis, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a former Moscow correspondent for NBC Radio, and the “second gentleman” of California, writes that he wants to hurt Russians by rapidly phasing out the U.S. $100 bills that many ...
May 10 2022
Economic Education
By:
Rosolino Candela
There are rare instances in one’s life where one can reflect back and say that they were in the presence of greatness and were aware of it. As I reflect back on my experience as a student of Professor Richard Wagner in his Ph.D. courses at George Mason University, this was certainly one of those rare instances for me...
May 9 2022
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
By:
David Henderson
This weekend I watched a CBS Sunday Morning show that I had taped a few weeks ago. There was a fairly depressing segment on the cost of child care versus the amount of money a parent, typically a woman, could make. The solution that one of the interviewees advocated was higher government subsidies for children. She mis...
May 9 2022
Liberty
By:
Scott Sumner
Reason magazine makes a strong case for Colorado's Jared Polis being America's most libertarian governor: The 46-year-old governor is presiding over one of the fastest-growing states in the country and a place that has one of the lowest death rates during the pandemic. He pushed back against members of his own pa...